Stoughton's Lori McKenna gets nostalgic on new album, 'The Tree'

By Jay N. Miller/For The Patriot Ledger

Friday

Jul 13, 2018 at 7:07 AM

Two-time Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter Lori McKenna has a busy few weeks ahead, and she can't wait to get started. That's because Stoughton's songwriting dynamo has a brand new album, "The Tree," due for release on July 20, and she'll be touring with her band to promote it, with a Wednesday show at City Winery in Boston to help kick it all off.

McKenna and her band have already played a handful of dates to polish their show and they were taking a few days at home in the Boston area when we talked last week. The new album is McKenna's 11th and the latest milestone in a career that had some of its origins in open mike nights at the old Blackthorne Tavern in Easton. "The Tree," which will be on the CN Records/Thirty Tigers imprint, is also McKenna's second consecutive album produced by Dave Cobb, who is the top producer anywhere these days for delivering roots music in ways that make it as powerful as possible.

"I'm excited to get started, because we recorded this album late last year," said McKenna in a telephone interview from her Stoughton home. "It feels good to get it teeing off, finally, because nobody else has heard these songs."

McKenna will be backed by her longtime pals, including Somerville guitarist Mark Erelli (a formidable songsmith in his own right), drummer John Sands, Swinging Steak Paul Kochanski on bass and Jamie Edwards on keyboards. The album was recorded in Nashville with Nashville-area musicians, including Cobb, but McKenna's band has adapted easily to the new material.

"I have been with my band for so many years, they're like family," said McKenna. "I don't usually have enough dates to keep them going, so they all have different projects too ... It's just fun to see them all again, and there's so much history of Boston music in these guys. We had a ball over dinner the other night - Paul was talking about opening up for The Ramones one time with one of his bands."

Cobb may have first become famed among Americana fans for his stellar work with Jason Isbell, but his list of clients now extends through all kinds of roots music. We asked McKenna what it is that he brings to a session, and how does he manage to coax performers into doing their best work?

"I don't know exactly how to describe the magic that Dave creates, but he definitely works at creating it," said McKenna. "I, personally, do not really like the studio at all, and I'm very uncomfortable there. You usually have to go over songs so many times to get them right, it drives me crazy. But, I learned from doing my previous record 'The Bird and the Rifle,' that Dave has a nice way of tricking you. He simplifies the process, so that you just think you're sitting around playing music with your friends.

"For me, it is all about the words, and the accompaniment is simple," McKenna added. "Before we recorded at his home studio. This time we worked at the RCA studio in Nashville, but at this big legendary studio, the process was the same as at his house. We'd all sit together in a little room and play live. There were no 'click tracks' or anything like that, just a simple way of playing to each other. I trust Dave 100 percent, so if he told me 'We got it,' I know we got a good take. If he suggested we need to try it again, I'm OKy with that. We all played live, together, and if we had a take where Dave said 'That's special,' then I knew we had a real keeper."

There are already some breakout singles from McKenna's forthcoming album, like the title cut, which deals with how family trees are important if sometimes unappreciated, or the single "Young and Angry Again," where the singer muses on the passage of time and the urgency of youth. "People Get Old" is another weighty look at time passing, while "The Lot Behind St. Mary's" alludes to a suburban youth much like McKenna's. "The Fixer" is a tender look at a relationship that works, while "Like Patsy Would" nods to both Patsy Cline and Ernest Hemingway in encouraging people to seize the day.

"There's not really a local connection to 'The Lot behind St. Mary's," McKenna said with a chuckle. "It's more me talking about growing up in the Catholic church, much like Bruce Springsteen did, although my experience was not as defining as his was, based on reading his autobiography. I think most people in my life reached a point where you were pushing against the church to find your freedom - where you can be yourself and still not be a bad person. It's not my story but it has details that are reflective of my experience.

"Young and Angry Again" is coming from the same place as a lot of my song ideas," said McKenna, who co-wrote more than half of the songs. "It's describing people who are young and angry, a lot, and realizing there's got to be some point to that. Especially as you get older, you miss that fire, even if it ever was misdirected now and then.

"'The Fixer' was drawn from a story a friend was telling me," McKenna said. "His wife needed something extraordinary and difficult to deliver and he made it happen. The way he told the story and described his love for his wife and all he had to do kind of blew me away. He just said 'I'm a fixer, that's what I do.' I realized that's almost a pun- fix-her - and the story led us to that point. He's like my husband, Gene, who's very good at fixing things but also very spiritual. But sometimes people are very good at fixing stuff and not as good at expressing themselves.

"With 'Like Patsy Would,' which was written with my two co-writers, we wanted to remind ourselves of the reason we write," said McKenna. "It's not about getting on the radio, although of course that's good. But we love it and we love all our songs. The goal is to be true, even if sometimes you lose track of what you're going for in a particular song. It feeds your soul, and so you craft them as best you can. But it's really about doing it for the love of the song."

The past few years have been very successful for McKenna's songwriting, as she and her favorite co-writers, Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey, won the Grammy for Best Country Song in 2016 for 'Girl Crush,' as well as the Country Music Award for Song of the Year. Last year her 'Humble and Kind' repeated that Grammy feat and also netted McKenna's second straight CMA Song of the Year.

While the new album has several songs McKenna wrote by herself, she's become quite adept at collaborating, taking a few days off from her family (Gene and the five kids), to spend time in Nashville with other songwriters. Her favorites have become Rose and Lindsey.

"Someone just showed us T-shirts they had made up, saying 'McKenna, Lindsey and Rose,' McKenna said, laughing. "We were just texting about how happy we are to have each other. Music has always done that for me, brought me together with people. You have a say in how your family and friends go, but you don't always expect to have such great friends on your job and working with them is really a blessing to me.

"We will sit around and literally talk about every OTHER thing in the world when we're supposed to be co-writing," McKenna explained. "The three of us went on such an incredible journey with 'Girl Crush.' I love co-writing and give it my whole heart. But doing it among three great friends like we are is special - they're like my side family. I've written as much with them as I have with any other writers and sometimes we don't do as well as we want to do but we end up with a batch of songs. When we were writing for this record, I kept calling my husband at night to tell him what great co-writes we had done. Writing songs from your gut almost always gives you something that pays off - even if it's crying, it makes you feel better."

The title cut of this new album reflects that, as "The Tree" is a song of gratitude.

"When you're older you realize all your family has done for you," McKenna noted. "That's also an example of a perfect co-write, since all three of us put our families into it, and they're all different, but it's all a real joy. I think we all are equally in love with the songs here but 'People get Old' is the anchor of the album and 'The Tree' explains the theme."

In that family theme, McKenna's sons band Teenender will open the Boston show.

"It's a full-circle moment, for sure, said McKenna. "It is great to see two of my kids write music themselves. My bandmates are fans of their band, which is inspired by 1980s pop. Musically, they run circles around me."